The bottom 80% control only 7% of the nation’s financial wealth.

[IrishBuckeye]

The wealthiest 5% of Americans control 72% of America's financial wealth. The bottom 80% control only 7% of the nation's financial wealth. The richest 400 Americans have more combined wealth than the poorer HALF of all Americans. That means 400 people have more wealth than 150,000,000 people combined. American corporations saw record profits in 2010. Nearly 80% of all economic gains made in the past thirty years have gone to the richest 1%. In the 1970s, the average CEO made 30 times what an hourly worker made. Today, a CEO makes 300 times what an hourly worker makes.


Is your Congressman representing the interests of the greater good or the interests for an elite select few?


*I know this has all been posted before but it seems to me that the Republicans think we have forgot these facts*



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/17/957589/-This-Is-What-Class-War-Looks-Like:-A-National-Campaign,-State-by-State

[Fuzz]

1. Those 80% don't chip in enough though, that 20% pays for everything and it's not fair!

:sarcasm:

[originalpckelly]

2. When you see the hard numbers, you cannot deny we live in an economic dictatorship.

Or perhaps an economic plutocracy.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. I think plutocracy is the most apt definition of our current system

[IrishBuckeye]

4. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, has perished from the earth.

And has been replaced by Government of the Corporations, by the Corporations, for the Corporations.

[originalpckelly]

5. Very true, unfortunately.

[Igel]

6. That would be privately held.

And it's important to separate out "income" from "wealth." Many of the wealthiest don't have the highest incomes.

The Gates Foundation has a huge amount of financial wealth; NGOs aren't not part of the pie that your stats cover. Pension funds often aren't included, either, nor are a number of kinds of trusts. And the 20% or so of GDP controlled by the federal government isn't represented.

Some of the people who actually control vast amounts of wealth don't own them. Some hedge funds and pension funds, for example, can sling $10 or $20 billion on a fairly short term, but the owners just follow the slinging. They exert control over their money before and after the fact, while brokers making far less actually move the money on behalf of managers working for the hedge fund stockholders. So who's important: the shareholders of the company, the managers setting policy, the brokers moving the assets, or the people who own the assets?

Right. Simple is good; simplistic, perhaps not so good.

[originalpckelly]

8. Bullshit, the top 10% take away 50% of the income too.

And what the hell kind of capitalist free market system has the economic equivalent of a politburo making decisions for the vast majority, and has such an unequal distribution of wealth?

You cannot have free enterprise in a country where so many people don't even have enough money to sneeze without borrowing money to buy some Kleenex.

People are always indebted to the wealthiest and the people who control their wealth. They own the rest of the country. It takes too long for a market controlled in such an undemocratic way to be responsive to changing realities. The people should control capital, they should own themselves. We need to develop business structures that do this in a capitalist free market way.

We the people must be the owners, but we aren't right now.

We have control over our lives in all the dumb places, and in the places it really matters, we have little control at all. I can order 20 different drinks at Starbucks, but I have two political parties to choose from. I have, in reality, no control over how much I make at a big company. I cannot just decide to strike out on my own, without selling myself to the corrupt power structure that controls America. It's very hard to save money to start a business in this country, because it all goes out the door every month for the vast majority, which is more than 70%.

This is profoundly wrong. People have too much debt, too much forced labor, too little ability to stand up for themselves and make change. It's so hard to have a union because all the money people need to survive goes right out the door to all the people who they owe money to, and they owe money to so many people, that there is little left over to buy essential items.

It has the effect of binding this nation to it's owners in a sick and twisted way. It is not freedom, it is tyranny.

[kayakjohnny]

7. But I wonder what percentage the bottom 80% actually contribute to the nation's financial wealth?

Seems it would be way over 7%. Not what we hold, but what we spend.

In other words, what do our spending habits contribute to the nation's financial health?

I wish people would believe the things we could all do with our spending that could bring many greedy corporations to their knees.

But there is no cohesive plan out there to get all of us on the same page about it.

[IrishBuckeye]

9. Yea, I'd like to know the production value of the bottom 80%. /nm

nm

[blindpig]

10. An obscenity which should not be tolerated.

That's what ya get from Capitalism, it is inevitable.

[jtown1123]

11. But we really need to eat our peas and swallow some more shared sacrifice.